dekkard
09-24-2012, 06:07 PM
Our garden consists of many raised beds. We have relatively few problems with bugs and the ones we do (mostly aphids) are easily controlled with monitoring and spot treatment with organic remedies. We only go organic b/c a large portion of our food comes from the garden and our health problems decreased greatly after switching to a near total organic diet.
HOWEVER, there is one chronic problem with woodlice/sow bugs (aka pill bugs or rollie pollies; See: Woodlouse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sow_bugs)) that frustrates us year after year. Apparently, the raised beds create an artificial ecosystem for them wherein they thrive free from the normal predator check on their population. These bugs suck the juice out of seedlings and do damage to fruit that is near or touching the ground.
We have tried boric acid and diatomaceous earth both of which work by killing on contact. The problem is we cannot seek out and spray every bug and if we do the soil PH can be changed by the large quantity of Boric acid or DE.
We never had problems with these bugs before raised beds. Does anyone else have problems with them? Any ideas for a solution would be appreciated. Thanks.
HOWEVER, there is one chronic problem with woodlice/sow bugs (aka pill bugs or rollie pollies; See: Woodlouse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sow_bugs)) that frustrates us year after year. Apparently, the raised beds create an artificial ecosystem for them wherein they thrive free from the normal predator check on their population. These bugs suck the juice out of seedlings and do damage to fruit that is near or touching the ground.
We have tried boric acid and diatomaceous earth both of which work by killing on contact. The problem is we cannot seek out and spray every bug and if we do the soil PH can be changed by the large quantity of Boric acid or DE.
We never had problems with these bugs before raised beds. Does anyone else have problems with them? Any ideas for a solution would be appreciated. Thanks.